Navarro

Chapter 11

Navarro grabbed his reins, led his buckskin a hundred feet back along the trail, then followed a game path into the wash. When he and the others had tethered the horses and the mule to roots and shrubs, they grabbed their canteens and shucked their rifles from their saddle boots. Musselwhite sat down to lace his mocassins.

“Think ole Nan-dash is gonna remember us, Tommy?” Tixier asked, his grin showing the gold tooth in his dark, angular face. His short, scruffy beard was dust-glazed, his weathered sombrero pulled low on his forehead.

“Well, I would hope so,” Navarro said with a wry smile, “after all we meant to each other.”

He climbed out of the wash and tramped along the trail. Behind him, Ward turned to Tixier. “What’d he mean by that?”

“A few years ago, we spent a whole winter prospecting right under his nose,” Tixier said. “He got onto us eventually, though, and we had one hell of a time gettin’ out of there. A year later, we ran him down for the Army, and the bluecoats corralled him on the reservation.”

They climbed several ridges and crawled through a ravine. The sun fell and the night gathered rapidly, offering a refreshing chill. There was no moon yet, but several stars kindled in the east. Coyotes yammered on the higher peaks, and a blue jay shrieked down the ridge to their right.

Occasionally as they walked, coming out of trees or topping a rise, they saw their destination—the boulder-strewn granite scarp the whites called Gray Rock, standing several hundred feet above the low apron slopes around it. The natives, who saw the peak as sacred, had been holding religious ceremonies on its crest for centuries.

As the men tramped toward the mountain’s base, the drums, rattles, and chants drifting down from the peak pricked the hair on the back of their necks.

They waited until good dark, when the guards posted on the jagged rock formations along the mountain’s crest couldn’t so easily see them, then climbed the trail twisting along its base. The trail was sheathed in boulders, cedars and pines, but in places the trail was exposed to men looking down from the mountain’s rim.

The last quarter mile was a hard climb over boulders, then up over the lava mushrooms and steep granite walls. Twice they had to avoid the roving, rifle-wielding pickets smoking their pungent Mexican tobacco.

The drums and chants were louder now, as though coming from only a few yards away. The musk of roasting mule and the tang of pine smoke hung heavy in the chill air. A crimson glow flickered across the distant pines stippling the mountain’s saucer-shaped, rock-ringed crest.

Ten feet ahead of Tixier, Navarro stole along a lava bed, then stopped suddenly. A rasp sounded to his right. Throwing up a hand for the others to freeze, he turned toward the sound.

An Indian sat not twelve feet away, perched on a flat boulder, a rifle draped across his thighs. The brave faced the canyon, away from Navarro, long hair wafting in the breeze. He was smoking a cigarette. The breeze blew the smoke away from Tom, but he caught a faint whiff of the pungent tobacco now. He smelled the man, too—the rancid sweat and bear grease and the musky odor of horse and mule.

Navarro stared at the man’s back, pondering. He glanced back at Tixier, a silhouette standing motionless ten feet behind him, on a low rise of rock. Musselwhite and Ward stood several feet behind him, rifles raised. Dallas shrugged.

Navarro laid his rifle flat on the ground, pulled his dagger from his belt sheath, and crept slowly up the rocks. When he was three feet from the guard, the man coughed suddenly, blowing smoke, bending forward over his rifle, and turning his head to his right.

Spying the man behind him, the guard’s head jerked toward Navarro and up. Tom leapt forward and buried the dagger deep in the man’s lower back, severing the spine. Navarro wrapped his left arm around the man’s mouth, pulling him off the boulder and holding him until his death spasms ceased.

Tom wiped his knife blade on the man’s leggings and looked around. Fifty yards beyond, the fire’s glow flicked across the rocky escarpments and pines, licking at the black sky.

Navarro sheathed the knife, picked up his rifle, and waved the others on. He stole along the lava flow, across a dip, then climbed a boulder-strewn ridge and crawled out over a lip of pocked boulders and wind-gnarled cedars, the fire flaming high in a low, saucer-shaped hollow a hundred feet below.

The large, pyramidal blaze was ringed by twenty-five or thirty Apaches, all facing away from Navarro. Chanting to the drums and rattles that rose like God’s angry heartbeat, they marched in place, arms raised above their heads, some wielding spears.

Before the group, a middle-aged man knelt before a smaller fire, sprinkling a dustlike substance over the flames. This was Nan-dash, a little grayer and more lined than Navarro remembered, but still square-shouldered and lean-waisted, hawk-nosed, pinched-lipped, his tiny zealot’s eyes set close.

He wore a beaded deerskin vest and an umber headband. A medicine pouch hung from a leather thong around his neck. His silver-streaked hair hung loose, his forehead and cheekbones slashed with war paint.

On either side of him, feathered lances poked up from the earth, their tips shrouded in flames.

Navarro dropped his gaze to the main fire. His insides shrunk, tightening. On either side of the fire, two women had been staked out, spread-eagle, like hides for stretching. They were naked, sweat-soaked skin glistening in the fire’s hot glow.

The one on the left side of the fire was Karla. Navarro didn’t recognize the captive on the right—probably taken, like Karla, on the dash from the reservation. Both young women cried and struggled against the leather thongs holding their hands and ankles fast to the stakes.

Navarro lunged forward with his rifle. Tixier grabbed his arm and smiled. “There’s twenty-six of them. Only four of us.”

Navarro stayed where he was, every muscle drawn taut. To his right were Musselwhite and Ward, the firelight sliding shadows across their faces.

Navarro dropped his gaze to Karla struggling futilely against the leather ties, bending her knees as she tried to work her ankles free. His heart hammered. He resisted the urge to leap into the hollow, shooting.

At the head of the chanting, dancing warriors, old Nan-dash gained his feet. He turned to one of the braves before him on his right, and nodded. He turned to one on his left and nodded again. Both braves whooped with joy, dropped their loincloths, and pushed through the group to the girls.

The young lady whom Navarro didn’t know gave a scream as one of the braves fell between her spread legs. As the other brave threw himself atop Karla, she turned her face away, gritting her teeth with anger and revulsion.

Navarro snapped his rifle to his shoulder, quickly sighted, and fired. The bullet drilled the brave atop Karla through both ears. As the brave slumped onto Karla’s shoulder, Navarro gained his feet, levered another shell, and fired into the Apaches, who were now jerking their heads around, dumbfounded. One clutched his belly and stumbled backward, knees bending.

“Idioto!” Tixier yelled as Navarro leapt down the ridge, levering the Winchester.

Two more Apaches dropped before the others figured out what was happening. While three-quarters of the group turned and ran, several threw knives or tomahawks. Most sailed wide. Navarro deflected a tomahawk with his Winchester, then shot the brave who’d thrown it as the man turned to run with the others for the wickiups and probably to fetch a rifle or a bow and arrow.

Navarro fired another shot and ran toward Karla. Tixier, Musselwhite, and Ward were laying down good cover fire behind him, the gunfire echoing around the canyon, wounded Indians screaming as they dropped. Navarro kicked the dead brave off Karla’s shoulder and knelt down.

“Tommy!” she cried.

Navarro set the rifle aside and shucked his bowie. A bullet sizzled between them, and he lifted his head to see that several Indians had fetched their rifles. One knelt twenty yards away, levering another shell into his smoking Henry. Navarro dropped his knife, grabbed his rifle, and was about to shoot the brave when a bullet from behind him took the man through the brisket.

Grabbing the bowie, Tom cut the thongs binding Karla’s wrists to the stakes, then those binding her ankles. He snatched a horse blanket from beside the fire, and threw it over her.

“Can you stand?”

Clutching the blanket to her breasts, she nodded. He helped her up and shoved her toward Tixier, who was shooting and running toward them, flanked by Musselwhite and Ward. As Dallas, extending his Winchester in his left hand, grabbed Karla with his right, Musselwhite dashed around the fire to the other girl.

She stared up at him, unseeing, her chest still, mouth drawn, face frozen in terror. She’d literally been scared to death.

A bullet burned a furrow atop Navarro’s right shoulder. A brave dashed from the other side of the fire, leaping toward him with a long knife in his hand. Navarro kicked the brave in the groin and smashed his rifle butt against his lowered head, cracking his skull with an audible crunch.

Rifles snapped a staccato din as Navarro ran back toward the rocky scarp, at the base of which Ward and Musselwhite shot from kneeling positions, Ward triggering his revolver, Charlie levering his Yellowboy, spraying the entire hollow and causing sparks to fly up from the fire. The Indians whooped and returned fire, their slugs chipping shards from the rocks around Charlie and the captain.

Navarro was nearly to the scarp’s base when he felt the beelike sting of a bullet slicing into his calf. It tripped him up momentarily, and he turned to squeeze off a shot. The Winchester clicked empty.

He swung a glance up the scarp. Tixier was helping Karla over the broken boulders. They were moving slowly, as the girl was barefoot and weak. His rifle apparently empty, Dallas paused frequently to trigger his pistol into the hollow. His right arm was bloody, and blood trickled from a bullet burn on the left side of his neck.

Throwing down his rifle and turning to Musselwhite and Ward, Navarro yelled, “Pull out!”

Charlie squeezed off another round and straightened. He was turning to follow Ward up the scarp when a bullet punched into his side. He fell back against a boulder with a grunt. Navarro fired at two braves running around the fire, dropping one and halting the other, then turned back to Charlie.

The carrot-topped tracker gained his feet, holding a gloved hand to his bloody side. “I’ll make it!”

Navarro was on one knee, shooting into the Indians dashing at him, sometimes four at a time. He held them off for a few more seconds. When his pistol was empty, he turned and climbed the rocks behind him, noting the blood Charlie had left on the boulders.

Bullets spanged off the rocks around him. His calf burned. He felt the wetness atop his shoulder, the blood dribbling down his collarbone.

He zigzagged through the boulders and, pausing behind a jagged monolith to reload his Colt, turned his gaze down the slope. Old Nan-dash himself was leading a handful of whooping braves up the scarp, leaping from rock to rock, pausing only to loose arrows or trigger their Henrys and Civil War- model Springfields.

Thumbing the last slug through the Colt’s loading gate by feel, Navarro cast another glance up the slope. Tixier and Karla were out of sight. Ward had just made the ridge and turned now, peering back down and yelling something at Musselwhite several yards behind him. Charlie had paused, quartering toward Navarro. In the flickering firelight, Tom saw his drawn features, the sharp rise and fall of his chest.

“Keep going!” Navarro shouted, then swung toward the charging Indians and cut loose with his Colt. They were moving too quickly, spread out across the rocks, and he only killed one, clipping another’s thigh.

Old Nan-dash’s deep voice rose with savage glee. “Nav-ar-oooo!”

Tom turned and lunged over the rocks, making the ridge a minute later, finding Charlie stumbling along the crest, heading back the way they’d come.

Navarro caught up to him, pulled the scout’s pistol from his cross-draw holster, turned, and fired two shots back along the ridge, hitting little but rocks and air but holding the Apaches at bay. Shots rose farther back along the hollow, and several Apaches seemed to be turning back. Navarro grabbed Musselwhite’s arm and led him after the others, whose shadows moved along the black eastern ridge, their shadows dancing ahead.

He found Tixier, Ward, and the girl crouched by a low, steep wall of boulders, breathing hard. Karla was on her knees.

“It’s a steep drop over the lip,” Dallas said, his right arm bloody, his revolver in his right hand. “Can’t see much.”

“Don’t see as we have much choice!” Navarro said, swatting the scout’s good arm.

When Tixier and Ward had both negotiated the rocks rimming the mountaintop and disappeared over the lip, Navarro helped Musselwhite. “Ah, Christ, Tommy,” the scout grumbled. “Apacheria . . .”

“I’ll buy you a steak in Tucson.”

“I prefer one of Pilar’s rump roasts . . . buried in onions. . . .”

“Picky bastard.”

When Musselwhite had gone over the ridge, Navarro turned to the loud whoops rising behind him. Shadows bounced among the rocks and shrubs, moving toward him fast.

He grabbed Karla’s shoulders, lifted her to her feet. “I’m gonna climb up, and you give me your hand.”

Using his hands and wincing against the pain in his wounded calf, he climbed the sharp rocks. When he’d gained the ridge, he lay down and reached back over the other side, extending his hand to the girl.

“Reach for it!”

Clutching the blanket with her left hand, Karla rose up on her toes and extended her right. He glanced behind her. A shadow with whipping hair was ten yards away and closing. Navarro extended Musselwhite’s revolver and triggered two shots as an arrow smacked the rock a foot beneath his chin. The Indian grunted and staggered back.

“Tommy!” Karla cried.

Navarro leaned farther out over the ridge and grabbed her hand. He’d lifted her two feet off the ground when something hard struck his forehead. The blunt end of a tomahawk, he knew, as the night dimmed and sounds grew faint.

The girl’s wrist slipped from his sweat-slick hand.

Her brittle voice came from a great distance. “Tommy, don’t leave me!”

Eyes fluttering and dimming, Navarro slid down the slope behind him. Gravity and unconsciousness enveloped him at the same time, and he went rolling down the ridge, into the darkness of the canyon yawning below.